When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) announced she would be freezing her eggs and shared a video of herself injecting fertility medication, she clearly anticipated some less-than-ideal reactions.
“Don’t be weird about this,” she told her followers on Instagram. “Even though I know all of you will be.”
The Democrat said she decided to share her experience with the egg freezing process to offer women more information about reproductive health and normalize a conversation that can feel isolating and daunting.
“As women, in general, we are not taught about our bodies, we are not prepared for our own lives, whether that is in puberty, whether that is in pregnancy, whether that is in perimenopause, menopause, whether that is in so many different aspects of our lives, whether that is if you have a condition like PCOS, whether you know you want to plan to have a family, whether you don’t plan to have children or biologically or what have you,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think we need to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context and every choice.”
The response from certain corners of the internet was swift, opinionated and, as Ocasio-Cortez predicted, very weird. And it was particularly weird from many men.
